Trump and Vance Were Not Invited At Cheney’s Funeral

Dick Cheney, long seen as one of the most polarizing Republican vice presidents, started by backing Trump in 2016 but ultimately broke with him over January 6 and Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results. 

The president, Donald Trump, and the vice president, JD Vance, were left off the guest list for the invitation-only funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral on Thursday morning, even as more than 1,000 people were expected to attend, including four living former vice presidents and two former presidents.

At the funeral of former Vice President Dick Cheney at Washington’s National Cathedral, the presence of Joe Biden and George W. Bush, former vice presidents Kamala Harris, Mike Pence and Al Gore, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, senior Cabinet members from both Republican and Democratic administrations, as well as congressional leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell offered a stark visual contrast.

Washington’s traditional political and institutional class united to honor Cheney while the sitting president and vice president were conspicuously absent.

During the service, tributes to Cheney mixed the political and the deeply personal. George W. Bush remembered his vice president as a trusted partner, saying «They do not come any better than Dick Cheney» and «He was everything a President should expect in a second-in-command», before closing with the promise «Somewhere up the trail, we will meet again».

His daughter, Liz Cheney, offered a more intimate portrait, recalling that «The night before my dad died, the sky about my parents' house filled with clouds in the shape of winged angels», and that «As my dad left this earth, his last words were to tell my mother he loved her», calling «One of the greatest blessings of my life» the time she had with him.

Dick Cheney, long seen as one of the most polarizing Republican vice presidents, started by backing Trump in 2016 but ultimately broke with him over January 6 and Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results.

In 2024, he went even further and publicly announced he would vote for Kamala Harris, crossing party lines and warning that Trump was a «greater threat to our republic» who «can never be trusted with power again».

That endorsement, widely described as an extraordinary and even shocking move for a lifelong Republican, crystallized the rupture between Cheney and the MAGA wing he believed was endangering democratic norms. Liz Cheney also campaigned alongside Kamala Harris during the 2024 race.

In that context, Trump and Vance’s absence from Cheney’s funeral — and the lack of an invitation in the first place — is not just a matter of protocol, but a visible symbol of how completely Cheney had turned away from Trump’s Republican Party by the end of his life .